Eyes that see the good in things: July 29, 2019

It was the third message I had received on the topic of mercy that day. Yes, it took three times before I finally, really paid attention. It works that way for me sometimes. Although I may have taken something of value from the first message and the second message, I stopped and really took notice at the third one. By the time the third message comes, it leaves me wondering if the message is for me. Or it could be that it just takes a sledgehammer to get my attention.

In any case, that’s what happened again yesterday, when I finally slowed down enough to stop and listen to the message. I think I’ve probably already mentioned that I like to spend my time in the car, listening to books or inspirational speakers that I don’t otherwise make the time for. A few hours in the car listening to motivational stories can make a world of difference in my attitude. So, that’s what I was doing that day as I was driving down the empty stretches of our North Dakota highways, listening as the scenery flew by me on the road.

I’ll admit that sometimes my mind wanders when I see something of interest or I start thinking about something else, so I am not always listening as closely as I would like. It’s not that I wasn’t motivated by the stories of second chances, grace and mercy but it wasn’t until I was listening to that third message of the day that I realized that extending mercy to others is something that I should be consciously working toward, on a daily basis.

The first message I heard was just a short story that Pope Francis which was originally taken from the Catholic Digest. It told about an experience that Pope Francis learned from a parish priest in Argentina, when he met a mother with young children who had been abandoned by her husband. He said that she had no steady income and did odd jobs to feed her children. When those odd jobs were scarce, she would prostitute herself to provide for her family and feed her children.

She continued to come to church and the church tried to help her by offering food and other items for her family. One day during the holiday season, the mother stopped in at the church and asked to speak with the parish priest, who thought that she was going to thank the church for sending a basket of food to her family.

When he asked her if she had received the basket, she said that she had received the basket and she appreciated it. However, the reason for her visit that day was to thank him because he had never stopped calling her Señora. Señora is a Spanish title or form of address for a married woman, which literally means “lady” and is a form of address signifying status or function. It was obviously a title that still meant something to her.

This experience with the young mother profoundly touched Pope Francis, who said it taught him the importance of treating every human person with dignity and mercy.

“Experiences like this teach you how important it is to welcome people delicately and not wound their dignity,” Pope Francis said. “For her, the fact that the parish priest continued to call her Señora, even though he probably knew how she led her life during the months when she could not work, was as important – or perhaps even more important than – the concrete help that we gave her.”

Sometimes, we humans, we (I) tend to be a little stingy at offering mercy. Some of us seem to have our own metric on whether a person is deserving of that grace or mercy from us. However, we all find ourselves in times when we are in need of a little mercy from the people in our lives. As humans, we are prone to failure and some of us are more expert than others at muddying and mixing things up, and otherwise messing up our lives.

Without knowing people’s situations, most of us have fallen at some point and realized that the bottom of the pit that we are looking up from, is really a pit that we dug for ourselves. We messed up. At the bottom of the pit, it’s hard to remember that there is hope. It’s then that we need reminders that there is hope for a second chance.

As I’ve already said, it’s the third message that made me sit up a little taller and listen a little more closely. These messages that were all delivered by different speakers didn’t come from a series, but their messages were closely linked, and for me, they built on each other.

Speaking about the many facets of mercy, he said that when you truly learn to be an agent of mercy, it transforms relationships. It was his message that made me realize that mercy is not just for the rock-bottom times of our lives but is necessary in all of our relationships… whether they are at home with family, with friends, at work or in other areas of our lives.

Mercy in our day to day lives is about being patient with other people’s quirks. I smiled a little when he asked if there might be a little arrogance on our parts when we are so easily annoyed by another person. It is very possible that the person that annoys you the most, given their personality, is just as annoyed by you! Our quirks make us who we are, and he says we would be wise to recognize that. He goes a step further to say that the wiser we become, the more patient and merciful we become.

Of course, mercy means helping people who are hurting and giving people a second chance, just like we hope that others will do for us. However, it also means that we extend kindness to people who offend us. He advises that if people want to show mercy, we learn to put people before policies, Put their needs before procedures. Value relationships over regulations.

His message concluded with a call to action, a call to a premeditated act of mercy every day. Maybe an act where we respond with mercy and an outstretched hand, rather than an argument. Our gestures may not change the world, but responding with mercy does have the power to change the way we interact with the people in our lives. On second thought, if enough of us are doing it, maybe it actually could change the world.

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